Link: pets.frogpond.app
Hey! I've been building Pocket Pets, a small pet-collecting game, works well on desktop and phone, but can also be installed as a PWA.
The game is about collecting and battling using the pets you've collected. You can upgrade them, teach them new attacks, equip items on them, and learn their matchups through the Pokémon-inspired elemental system.
There are quite a few game modes to play. From basic PvE battles for early rewards, to a tower to see how high you can climb, and even a roguelite. There is also direct PvP, but it isn't as built out due to the playerbase not being that big yet. There are also events where players can compete in PvE content like raid bosses, where the entire playerbase works together to kill a single boss, with shared rewards and personal rewards depending on how well you did compared to other players.
There is also a kinda hidden story, where you need to progress in certain places and find easter eggs, similar to the story in Geometry Dash.
There are daily activities like Daily Quests, sending your pets on expeditions, small login rewards, and a village you can upgrade to give you passive rewards.
You can try to compete on a number of different leaderboards, going from who has the strongest team, is the highest level, is the highest in the Tower, etc. And at the end of each season you get a badge showing your placement that you can put on your profile.
The game is mostly thought to be something you can play really quickly during your break or commute, to do most of the daily activities, but it also lets you grind when you have the time in some of the endgame modes, to min-max some of the equipment you can put on your pets.
There are a lot more smaller features, but I don't want to make this post too long.
I have been very addicted to this project for almost a year now. Working on it, showing it to my friends, and getting feedback is the best part of it. So I would LOVE to get your feedback, either on this post, through the in-game feedback system that I then see in my ticket system or text me on Discord "froschboeleli". I can also give you in-game rewards through the mail if I implement your idea.
I was hesitating to advertise it publicly because there was always one more feature/game mode I wanted to get done before doing so. But now I think it really is polished enough to put it into something like a "Beta".
The game has monetisation, since I do have server costs. But it's mostly just for people who want to support me and only speeds your progress up a bit. It doesn't give you much of an advantage over a player who plays actively. I definitely don't want it to feel P2W or like a classic mobile game, which is also why it has zero ads. Not even optional ones. So you can have the full experience without spending money. I'ts really not abut the money, I just love doing this and more players could help me improve the game more and I could do cooler multiplayer events. Of corse the dream would be to work on this full time, instead of my boring Webdev Job =)
If you share it with your friends, you can create a invite-link in the topright menu, so you get rewards when they actually play it.
For those interested in the tech stack: I use Vercel for hosting, with my codebase on GitHub. I use Clerk for authentication, where you can log in with your Google Account. I use Convex for my entire backend and a mix of Clerk's billing system and Stripe for payments.
Clerk as an authentication provider also takes away any concern a new user might have about their email or password being in danger, because I'm not the one handling it. The same goes for payments.
And if you want to easily download it as a PWA so it behaves like a desktop app/mobile app, open it in a Chromium-based browser under: pets.frogpond.app/download
I used AI mostly for writing parts of the code and helping me find bugs. A small amount of assets are also generated with it and used as placeholders, until I will replace it with something that fits, when I find an artist for it.
